No More Gambling With The Lives Of Iranians: We Must Ban the War Prediction Market

On February 27, more than 150 accounts placed bets on Polymarket accurately predicting that the US would strike Iran by the following day. Of these accounts, at least 16 made a profit of over $100,000, and at least 109 made over $10,000. The New York Times found one anonymous account that had spent $60,000 in the days before the strikes and made nearly half a million dollars.

Given the timing of these bets, this has raised concerns about insider trading. Bubblemaps, an analytics platform that turns blockchain data into interactive visuals, found a cluster of linked accounts that made $1.2 million by making very specific bets with near-perfect accuracy. This includes betting that the US and Israel would attack Iran on February 28.

What’s more, their analysis found that this was not an isolated incident. For instance, in June 2025, two of these accounts bet $10,000 and $100,000 that Israel would launch military strikes against Iran just days before they did. Those strikes were part of a surprise attack that Israel had been covertly planning for months.

This is a serious issue, but let’s be clear: The idea that this kind of insider trading is not happening under the most overtly corrupt presidential administration in US history is quite frankly laughable. Indeed, the Trump administration is actively supporting Polymarket and Kalshi against ongoing efforts by states to ban them. Coincidentally, Donald Trump Jr. has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm and is a strategic advisor for Kalshi. Any decision that benefits those companies would likewise benefit Trump’s family.

An outright ban won’t change the fact that we are a nation where millions of people believe it is completely fine to gamble on death.

But the problem here is larger than the Trump fraud network. Prediction markets represent a further commodification of war, violence, and death—one that distracts from the injustices of war and the suffering of its victims. It is a commodification that risks manufacturing consent for more violence by providing people with a financial incentive for it. While it stopped amid public backlash, Polymarket was allowing people to place bets on whether a nuclear bomb would be detonated by the end of 2026 or 2027. Over $800,000 worth of bets had been placed before the market was taken down.

Betting on such grotesque violence is not only morally repugnant in itself, it risks desensitizing us to the true human cost of that destruction. What’s happening in Iran is not a just war being waged against a legitimate threat. America is not freeing the Iranian people—it is murdering children and destroying a nation without any regard for who will pick up the pieces. This is senseless carnage carried out by two morally bankrupt countries against a nation that, regardless of one’s feeling toward it, did everything it could to prevent this war.

None of these deaths had to happen. And yet, companies like Kalshi and Polymarket were fueling people’s desires for violence. In January, Kalshi began taking bets on whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be “out as Supreme Leader” before February 1, March 1, April 1, July 1, or September 1, 2026. This was a lucrative market that attracted more than $54 million in trades. When his assassination was confirmed on February 28, those who had put money on “before March 1” thought they had "won" big.

Instead, Kalshi invoked a “death carveout” clause to avoid paying customers their "winnings." A Kalshi spokesperson said that the company “included every precaution on this market to make sure people could not trade on the outcome of death.”

Their consumers disagree. They filed a lawsuit against Kalshi alleging that they were drawn to the “Khamenei Market” because they understood “with an American naval armada amassed on Iran’s doorstep and military conflict not merely foreseeable but widely anticipated,” Khamenei would “most likely” be removed from office “through his death.”

In other words, these people were intentionally betting that the US would kill Khamenei and are upset because their earnings were denied. This is true regardless of what Kalshi intended or whatever precautions it took. The market itself created the possibility—the perverse hope—that Khamenei’s death might enrich their own.

For those bettors, Khamenei’s assassination was a personal victory; the injustice was that Kalshi denied them their rightful spoils. A business executive in New York told the Washington Post that he had placed two bets totaling $3,460 that Khamenei would be “out” by March 1 and was expecting to "win" $63,000. He remarked: “I was booking my trip to Courchevel. Then they changed the rules… and everybody got screwed.”

Except not everyone got screwed: the Iranian people did. They are the ones who lost everything. That business executive—almost assuredly overpaid—will not miss those "winnings." But Iranians will miss the loved ones they lost. Those deaths are an absolute loss. They can never be recovered, replaced, or recuperated.

These markets should be banned, and there is some congressional momentum on that issue. But an outright ban won’t change the fact that we are a nation where millions of people believe it is completely fine to gamble on death. We are a nation whose government actively posts inane memes and jokes about the illegal war it is conducting in clear violation of international law.

Things must change: We cannot allow ourselves to be driven to moral depravity by a conman and his lackeys. We must end this illegal war. We must help the Iranian people rebuild their country. We must become, in short, a nation that condemns deaths and cherishes life.